Posted March 20, 2004

Analysis by Richard Cowan

Both qualitatively and
quantitatively, the prison systems in many major western democracies make a
mockery of our professed concerns about children and minorities, and human
rights in general.

On February 19th an LA
Times editorial, “Education in Brutality” described “the brutality of life
for the 4,000 offenders locked up by the California Youth Authority.”

It said, “Teenagers
beat and stab others and are beaten themselves, in daily and expectable
routines. Some are confined 23 hours a day in 4-by-8 cells, where for meals they
must suck pulverized bologna and milk from a straw stuck through a small metal
slit. The mentally ill are often thrown into predatory general populations,
getting only sporadic medical treatment.”

Oh, the things we do to protect our
children!

See
How
the War On Marijuana To Save The Children
Has Become A War On the Children To Save Marijuana Prohibition

Almost as much as we do to protect
minorities.

On August 18, 2003, The Christian
Science Monitor reported, “If current trends continue, it means that a
black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to
prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it’s 1 in 6; for a white
male, 1 in 17.By 2010, the number of American residents in prison or with prison
experience is expected to jump to 7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults,
according to the new report

A
2001report by Mother Jones magazine, “Debt to Society,” offers some
frightening data:

Percentage
of U.S. prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses in 1980: Eight.

Percentage
of U.S. prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses in 1998: Twenty-three.

U.S.
incarceration rates of Caucasians per 100,000 residents: 235.

U.S.
incarceration rates of African-Americans per 100,000 residents: 1,815.

District
of Columbia’s ranking among U.S. incarceration rates: First.

Percent
change from 1980 to 2000 in U.S.’s per capita spending on schools: 32 percent
increase.

Percent
change from 1980 to 2000 in U.S.’s per capita spending on prisons: 189 percent
increase.

Percent
change from 1980 to 2000 in Texas’ per capita spending on prisons: 401 percent
increase.

(unless
otherwise stated, all statistics are for the year 2000 ):

See
Libertarian
Party Press Release Gives Data On Prison Population As It Passes 2 Million.

Although we have only five percent of
the world’s population, we have the largest prison population in the world,
twenty-five percent of the total. But other countries seem to want to catch up
with us.

The Guardian reported December 15 of
last year that the UK has “Twice as many black people in prison as on
campus.

The Commission for Racial
Equality’s report on racism in prison reported that there are 10,000 black
people in prison but almost half of that amount on Britain’s campuses.

There were 10,000 black people in
prison and just over 6,000 on undergraduate courses. Around one in six inmates
in Britain’s prisons is Afro-Caribbean - despite the fact that they make up only
2% of the country’s population.”

And UK prisons are now officially
full. Again.
See
The
UK Criminal Justice System Is “In Chaos.” Prisons Full. More Reasons
Cannabis Prohibition Must End.

On
March 12th The Telegraph reported, “Prisons face an
over-crowding crisis as the Home Office admitted last night that more people are
in jail in England and Wales than ever before.

The prison population has
reached a new record, passing 75,000 for the first time.”

But prisons in France, another very
prohibitionist country, are also full.

On March 17th Agence
France Press reported, “France’s prison population has reached an all-time
high, as the center-right government pursues the fight on crime launched when it
took office two years ago, the country’s prison authority said Wednesday.

On March 1, French jails housed
61,032 inmates, putting the occupancy rate at 26 percent above capacity.

The previous
record of 60,963 dated back to July 1 last year, when the 60,000 mark was
surpassed for the first time since France’s liberation from Nazi occupation in
1944.

In January, the Council of
Europe’s anti-torture committee (CPT) criticized overpopulation in French jails,
saying it could lead to conditions that suggested “inhuman and degrading
treatment”.

In response to
the prison bed shortage, the government is planning to build new facilities that
would add 13,200 places for inmates.”

Of course, by the time they are built
the prison population will have grown even more.

But does all of this make us any
safer?

Vincent Schiraldi, the Executive
Director of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, DC, noted in
yesterday’s New York Times that California’s “three strikes and you’re
out” law was enacted 10 years ago this month.

“Between 1994 and 2002,
California’s prison system grew by 34,724 inmates, while that of New York, a
state without a “three strikes” law, grew by 315. Presumably,
California’s violent crime rate should have plummeted relative to New York’s.
Yet during that time period, New York’s violent crime rate dropped 20 percent
more than California’s.”

And the problems are just beginning,
because when these prisoners are released, as most of them will be, they will be
dumped back out on society with all of their physical, mental and social
problems made worse by a system that actually calls itself “corrections.”

As Dostoevsky said about Czarist
prisons: “The degree to which a society is civilized can be judged by
entering its prisons.”

How shameful it is that this applies
to 21st century prisons in “progressive democracies”!

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